New FHA loan guidelines may make it harder for you to qualify for a mortgage if you have student loans.

Previous to the new rules, FHA allowed us to ignore student loans that were deferred greater than 12 months. The new rules eliminate this exemption. All student loans must be considered as part of your monthly debt.

If your student loan servicer won’t report a monthly payment, the new rules say we must use 2% of the loan balance. Fortunately, loan servicers typically will provide an effective payment based on the loan’s current balance if you ask, and this payment typically is closer to 1% of the loan balance.

The change makes FHA more consistent with conventional loan programs. However, Fannie Mae allows us to use 1% of the balance if the servicer won’t report a payment.

FHA still provides one advantage over conventional loans. It allows the use of the actual payment for income-based student loan repayment plans. These plans often have payments that are less than 1% of the loan balance.

A few weeks ago, we examined the positive changes Fannie Mae and USDA made to their loan guidelines concerning the treatment of student loans. For deferred loans, both dropped the payment we must count when qualifying you for a mortgage from 2% to 1% of the loan balance.

But what about Freddie Mac? If the credit report doesn’t show the loan payment, Freddie says we can use 1.5% of the loan balance or ask the loan servicer to provide the payment. The guidelines don’t address the issue of graduated or income-based repayment plans, which don’t fully amortize the student loan based on the current payment. These plans may have payments less than 1.5% of the balance (or even 1% of the balance). I suspect Freddie will address this inconsistency soon.